The Businessman
by zombievalentine
Summary: Mr. Litwak was an excellent businessman and he should have been content with just the fact that he was intuitive at picking games that made him the most money. Drabble, spoilers.


Mr Litwak was a good businessman. He was patient with kids and he knew how to console a crying child, break up a dispute amongst 'who was next' on the machines and had a generally instinctive knowledge about what games and what foods and what attractions would be popular.

Those who knew him well weren't particularly surprised when he went to a trade show and arrived back with some new-fangled arcade game called 'Fix-It Felix Jr.' which promptly went on to be the most popular game of its kind worldwide and turned him a tidy profit, skyrocketing the popularity and scope of little Litwak's arcade.

When asked, the man would shrug and smile and mutter something about how his Nana was a good businesswoman. It was something of a lie. His Nana was the kind of woman he had had to buy channel blocking for. He put it on the shopping network and infomercial channels so she wouldn't spend every last cent in her bank account on overpriced kitchen gadgets. When she had gone to the Retirement Home, the nurses eventually had to unplug the phone.

No, there was something about that game that was downright comforting. Like real people. He always had to smile at Felix's chipper 'I can fix it' and caught himself wincing when poor old Ralph hit the ground with a thud.

It didn't stop there.

He couldn't explain it, but when the Q-bert console broke, he actually found himself sobbing over his evening quarter count. He eventually rationalized that a machine he'd bought second-hand back when Litwak Arcade was a tiny little hole in the wall of a space probably just had some sentimental value to him.

He was a good businessman and poor Q-bert's machine was swiftly replaced with Tappers.

But that wasn't business. Not really. If he had to tell you why he bought the game, he didn't rightly know. It was a game about bartending! Common sense told him that if the parents caught wind that a video game was promoting selling alcohol, he could lose business!

But they didn't, and Tappers stayed where it was.

At the next annual trade show, he knew exactly what game he should buy and so the delivery truck showed up the next week with Turbo Time.

God help him but he hated that game. It was everyone's new favourite, and it was raking him in the dough. He should have been delighted with it but 'Turbotastic!' didn't make him grin the way 'I'm gonna wreck it!' did.

It took him a little while to figure out why. It wasn't the game, it was the game's character. It was strange, but he always thought the losing racers seemed to lean away from Turbo a little when they were standing on their 8-bit podium blocks, as though the white-clad winner was offensive to them somehow.

It got to the point where the catchphrase 'Turbotastic!' became so immensely offensive to him that he began to lock himself in his office more and wander around the floor with his patrons less so as to block it from his auditory sensors.

Racing games were popular so to ease the stress he bought a second one. A newer one and certainly not another Turbo Time. Some arcades would buy multiples of the same console, he reasoned but some of the appeal of Litwak's was its diversity.

That's what he told himself.

He refused to believe he was making excuses.

Then, just a few short days later, he heard the shout.

He came barreling out of his office, cursing his own sense of stupidity over a video game and getting ready to break up a kid's fight. Litwak's had gone so many years without so much as an altercation and here he was, getting worked up about a dumb videogame character!

What he found made his blood freeze in his veins. Far from fisticuffs, the two boys were staring in half confusion and half fear at what could only be described as the impossible. It was as if Turbo had actually left his game and was in the new, more modern one, causing the screen to glitch.

The machine kept emitting the same unholy catchphrase, faster and faster until the screen's pixels blurred and the sound ran together into an unintelligible blur.

"Turbotastic-turbotasticturbotastictastic tastictastic..."

He was only too happy to unplug both machines and send them away as soon as he could.

It wasn't until 1997 that he dared get another racing game. Japanese Anime seemed to be the trend to watch and sure enough, during the next trade-show visit, the colourful candy-themed racing game caught his sharp eye.

That night after closing down the arcade, taking inventory and giving the machines a thorough once-over, he found himself standing in front of the good old Fix-It Felix Jr. Box. He was staring at intently, as though the 'insert coin to start' screen and loop showing gamers how to play would tell him something.

The screen looped on.

He thought back to the bouncing sugar-encrusted world from the trade show. What could possibly go wrong with little girls and candy?


End file.
